Careers in Television and Video: How a TV Station Operates

This is not necessarily critical information to know if you are seeking a career in television or video. Even so, it might be useful to understand how a broadcast station operates, and which department they place more importance on. Where they place their importance can be a humbling realization for the artistic and career minded. Even if you are not interested in cameras or editing, but prefer office work, it will reveal other opportunities in this industry you might not be aware of. At the very least, it might just be interesting knowing how your local TV station works.

In the early days of network television, when TV was becoming more popular, local affiliate stations increased broadcast air times during the day to make more money. They soon began producing their own programming. These stations were like hectic, little miniature movie studios. Remember, everything was live. Even the station announcer was sitting by a microphone. They usually started broadcasting live at around six or seven o'clock in the morning, and ended around midnight. They did not have syndicated reruns in those days, so they would produce their own morning and children's shows along with the news. During the day they would produce live game shows, dance shows, play old movie films, whatever, ending with the local evening news. Then they would switch broadcast to what their network was showing, maybe finishing off with another newscast, and usually ending broadcast with the Star Spangled Banner, then a test pattern with tone.

This daily routine required quick thinking hosts, fast moving, and efficient crews. After the morning news, talk and morning show hosts would interview local celebrities and other guests of interest. Just about every station had a movie host or two, showing old movie films, holding contests and maybe having an audience. Some stations even had creep show hosts for old horror movies. In the afternoon, they would maybe have an after school kiddy program with a live audience, showing old cartoon film shorts. Then they would do the local news. Local stations do not produce shows like these anymore. For one thing, the staff members needed to produce these shows had to be paid. Not to mention the benefits, and retirement packages for full-time employees.

Secondly, the rise of syndicated film shorts, movies, soap operas, and game shows in the late 1950's provided stations with inexpensive programming, making it unnecessary to produce their own. By the late 1960's and early 1970's, very few stations were producing their own programs, except for the news. Here is a little known fact. A local TV station must be licensed by the FCC to operate, and also must be approved to operate in their area by the local government. A city, county or town council approves their license every few years or so. As local affiliates began producing less of their own programming, and running more syndicated shows, cities began to require that they must still provide a certain amount of local programming in their schedule. If they did not meet these requirements, the affiliate's license would not be approved. What do most local stations produce themselves these days? For the most part, they produce the news.

In this way, they can still produce the telecast cheaply. They have inexpensive access to preprogrammed content by being associated with a network, and they can still meet the basic requirements of providing local interest programming with only a few production staff members. Now do you get it? Recently, local stations have been incorporating more and more local sequences into their morning and daily newscasts. They almost always have done cooking segments, and have now begun to do more movie reviews, interviews and casual anchor sit-downs. Some are even venturing out and producing their own morning entertainment and magazine shows, but the bread and butter of local TV stations, production-wise is news.

One thing in common today as it was in the early days, is where the money comes from. A single syndicated TV sitcom, especially if it is a currently popular one, can cost several hundred thousand dollars, or more for a local station in obtaining rights to broadcast the series, and that is only for just one show. How many syndicated programs does your local station run? Syndicated reruns are edited down (for more commercial time) and often sold in series packages, or a la carte. Where does the money come from? It comes from where it has always come from, sales and marketing. In other words, they make their money back with commercials. It is not called a commercial station for nothing.

Here is another fun fact. What department do you think the TV station manager comes from? Do you think they started out in the production department? Yes? Wrong! Most station managers, come from the sales and marketing department. Television on any level is a fast paced money making business, and you need someone with administrative experience in making money, to run it. Where does this leave the production department? To be honest, a local station may have two or three actual full-time production personnel. Most of their work involves producing commercials, promos and 'bumps' for the station. Occasionally they work on in-depths, specials and local events. There is work to be found in this department as a production assistant (PA), but it is part-time with little room for advancement unless someone moves up (rare). The experience you earn is for moving on to a larger market.

The news department is comprised of a few key staff members, and is mostly made up of part-time employees. Employment opportunities include the news crew and PA's who do just about anything needed, production-related or otherwise. I once helped to load tree trimmings that were cut around the station on the back of a truck, and unload them at the dump. You never know, so don't complain. The engineering department has a few employment opportunities too. Entry-level job openings most often are in on-air broadcast. It used to be, you had to have an FCC license to do this, I still have mine, but this is no longer the case. Computer skills are needed nowadays because just about all programming, unless they are live network feeds or newscasts, is done digitally. Tape is still involved, but an on-air controller (master control) broadcasts from computerized hard drives these days.

The thing to remember in regards to your career is the difference between the news department and the engineering department. When you start off in a local station, it may not be that big of an issue at first. You just want to find work for now. Later on, depending on your aspirations, you may want to move into news, more specifically ENG (electronic news gathering) work instead of engineering. There is an old saying, "once in engineering, you can't always move into production". In larger markets the difference becomes more apparent.

In a large television station, the news crew is divided into two teams. The producer, director, script supervisor etc. are in the news production department. Most of the crewmembers touching the equipment, or pushing the buttons are usually under the supervision of the chief engineer. As a crewmember this may not be an issue, but as an on-air operator, you will not have many opportunities to move into production, or news for that matter. You will be spending you time in a roomful of equipment by yourself. It is not an awful job. I started off as an on-air operator. It pays well, and can be very interesting and steady work. But if you are creatively minded like me, move out of the position as soon as possible. Becoming a camera operator or technical director provides a better opportunity of moving into production, even though they may or may not be engineering positions.

Scheduling, or trafficking is under the sales department. If you like scheduling and administrative work, this job is for you. They schedule everything that will be seen on their station, down to the very second. They plot out commercials and other promos between each program segment of all shows for every day and night. But there is one last thing to understand about any television station. It can be said about any field of the entertainment industry. The most important departments of a television station are sales, marketing and engineering. Sales and marketing because they must earn back and make a profit from their investments. Engineering because you have to broadcast it for people to see. Production and news production fall a distant second in a local television station. Money is what makes the entertainment industry go 'round, on any level.